Product Description

Make your fortune by smuggling Mexican food into Canada! Mounties are on the prowl, looking for anyone in possession of salsa, jalapenos or black olives. Where some see great risk, you see great reward! Outwit your opponents and the border patrols to prevail!

Contents:

Product Reviews

Jim Doherty's game themes always make me laugh, and I'm always
impressed at how he manages to mix clever mechanics with the
most
inane themes that one could imagine, like in his
tremendously cute and
wily game Monkeys on the
Moon. I fully expected The Nacho Incident
(Eight
Foot Llama, 2005 -
Jim
Doherty) to follow through and be a
similar funny yet excellent game. The theme of the game is
one in
which Mexicans are constantly trying to avoid Mounties as they
struggle to smuggle quality Mexican food into Canada.

Every time I mention the theme to a new player, they
simply laugh,
because the theme is that ludicrous – yet sounds like a fun
game. And
Mr. Doherty has not disappointed. While I'm not sure that
it is as
good as the wonderful Monkeys on the Moon (which is a lofty
goal), The
Nacho Incident is certainly a well-designed game, and plays
quickly,
yet offers real strategic choices. Humor and strategy can
and do mix
in this game.

Four Province decks (representing Alberta, Saskatchewan,
Ontario, and
Quebec) are placed in a line on the table, with the top one
flipped
face up. The face up card shows four types of foods that
folk in that
Province desire (beans, onions, peppers, tortillas, salsa,
olives,
corn, or sour cream) along with an associated price (from
three to
nine) that they will pay for these foods. Each player gets
two cards
(one for the "10's" digit, and the other for the single
digits) and a
cube for each to track their score. Players also place four
Cantina
cards that match the Province decks in a row in front of
them, along
with two random food cubes that are drawn from a bag. These
food
cubes match in color one of the eight desired foods of the
Canadians.
Twelve Mountie cards are shuffled and placed in three face down
decks, with the first one in the first deck flipped face up.
Each
player is given eight Smuggler cards from a deck, and the
player who
has the most interesting thing in their pocket receives the
"Gemstone".

The game is made up of three rounds, each which has four
turns. At
the beginning of each turn, players play a Smuggler card
from their
hand face down and then simultaneously reveal them. Each
smuggler
card shows one of the flags matching one of the provinces, a
smuggler
and his speed (from 1 to 9), and the amount of gold that
smuggler
costs (from one to four - depending on the speed of the
smuggler). The
player who has played the fastest smuggler goes first, then
the player
with the next fastest smuggler, etc. Ties are broken by the
player
with the gemstone (or closest to him). The player who has
the fasted
smuggler takes the face up Mountie and places it on their
matching
cantina card.

On their turn a player must decide which Province their
smuggler
heads for - it can be either the one that matches the flag
on the
smuggler's card or an adjacent Province. A player then can
sell one
of their food cubes to the province if it is wanted there,
placing the
food cube on the card (preventing further cubes of that type
being
sold), and receiving the money shown on the card. All money is
tracked on a player's score card. The first player can actually
smuggle a food cube from another player's warehouse but then
must give
them all their food cubes in retribution. No matter if the
smuggler
delivered food or not, the player must pay the cost shown on the
smuggler's card.

The smuggler is then placed on top of the province in
which they
delivered their food cube to, starting a "Cantina" there.
All players
check their provinces for any Mounties. Each Mountie
arrests the
highest-numbered smuggler in their province (discarding both
cards).
If there are no smugglers in a province, the Mountie sits
tight.
However, two Mounties together cause one to wander off and
arrest
(discarding both cards) the highest-numbered smuggler in any
province!

Any Province which has a food cube in all four spots is then
discarded, putting the cubes back into the bag and replacing
the card
with a new one from that deck. Each player then can sell
any cubes
they have for one gold each, if they want; then draw food
cubes until
they have a total of two. The next Mountie card is flipped
face up.

If the round is over (after every four Mounties), players
compare the
Cantinas that they have in each province. The player whose
total is
highest in each province receives a bonus that matches that
province
(+4 or +5) and must also discard all of their smugglers in that
province. Each Mountie also is worth "-3" or "-4" points
for any
players who have them in their provinces. Players can
refill their
hand to eight smugglers, discarding as many cards as they
wish before
redrawing. The next round then begins, with the player who
has the
gemstone, giving it to the player with the lowest score.

After the third round, the player with the most money is
the winner!

Some comments on the game...

1.) Components: Once again, Jim has teamed up with Scott
Starkey,
whose cartoonish artwork is a perfect matchup for the Eight
Foot Llama
themes. The smuggler cards are particularly funny, with the
slowest
smuggler (#1) riding a unicycle, and the fastest in a UFO.
Putting
the flags on the cards was a nice touch; because even though
the cards
are easily recognized by their background colors, the flags
helped
differentiate for those who are color blind. The cubes are
plastic
cubes that match up very well to the colors on the province
cards. A
small felt bag is included to hold the cubes, and all the
cards and
bag fit easily into a small flat box that showcases off more
of Mr.
Starkey's artwork.

2.) Rules: The rulebook, which is only four pages of
color rules,
including many examples, is clear and easy to understand. I
will
state that I missed a couple rules in my first game - in which I
confused Round and Turn, but it really isn't that difficult.
All whom
I've taught the game to have picked it up fairly quickly,
although it
usually takes them a turn or two to understand the long range
implications of the Mounties. Even after four games, I'm still
wondering if there are other strategies and tactics that I
can be trying.

3.) Time/Players: The game works with two players; but
as with most
games with simultaneous selection, it's much more enjoyable
with three
or four – both of which I would give equal credit to. It's
great for
me to have a fun, fast, humorous game that plays three
people well.
And when I say fast, the game typically takes about thirty
to forty
minutes and keeps players' minds occupied the entire time.
Short and
sweet.

4.) Smugglers: The key to the game, at least so I think,
is to know
which smuggler to play. There are benefits to playing the
fastest
smugglers - a player can be the first to deliver a food
cube, getting
a high payoff and blocking other players; they can steal a
critical
cube from a neighbor; and they can get a good Cantina lead
in their
province. However, there are also several disadvantages:
the player
has to deal with the Mountie and the negative effects it
brings; they
must go first, revealing their strategy; and they have to
pay a high
amount to the smuggler himself. All of this is balanced
even further
when players realize that they have a limited hand of
smugglers, and
every smuggler they use now will be unavailable later on in
the round.

5.) Mounties: Every turn, the Mountie that is revealed
changes the
course of player's actions. Sometimes a player simply
doesn't care if
they get a Mountie, because it's going to arrest one of
their small
smugglers that they don't care about, thus negating its negative
bonuses. But a Mountie can become a big pain - as they can
effectively neutralize your largest Cantinas and give you
negative
points each round. They don't go away! So a player could
conceivably
lose points from a Mountie three times in a game. Also,
getting two
Mounties together in the same province is a terrible idea,
since they
will arrest your best Cantina operator. To win, it's
usually a good
idea to command a bonus in at least one of the provinces,
and that's
often where a player's biggest Cantinas are. To have a Mountie
destroy that can be annoying. So when a Mountie comes up
that will
hurt a player, they are tempted to play a lower card so as
to avoid
the hassles.

6.) Simultaneous Selection: And that's why I love this
mechanic so
much! I might play a low card to avoid the Mounties and
find out that
I could have played a higher one, because Joe played a "9" speed
smuggler. Or I play a "5" speed, confident that I'm not the
fastest,
only to find out that everyone else played a much slower
smuggler.
Attempting to read your opponents, trying to figure out what
provinces
they are heading to, and how fast they will travel, is a big
deal.
Scores are often quite close, with the Province bonuses
playing a
large part, so one mistake can be costly.

7.) Fun Factor: The games theme is ridiculous, even
though some
Canadian friends have assured me that good Mexican food IS
rare up
there. But it's a theme that many people can relate to and
laugh
about, and the games mechanics actually fit the theme quite
well.
I've always been amazed at how Jim makes such a wonky theme
yet makes
it plausible in a game setting. Every time I've played the
Nacho
Incident, it's been a fun time of laughter and easy going
strategy.

All four of the Eight Foot Llama games that I've played
have been
quite enjoyable, but this one and Monkey on the Moon are my
favorites.
It has a silly theme, sharp mechanics, and still plays in
less than
an hour, offering some solid play time to three or four
players.
Don't be scared off by the small box or the odd theming, because
you'll miss a clever little gem that you'll be playing time
after
time. Boy oh boy, I love Mexican food; and while this game
isn't
quite as good as a tremendous taco salad (my favorite food),
it's
certainly a savory experience.

Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"

Other Resources for The Nacho Incident:

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